How do we tread? Differences in stability-related foot placement control between overground and treadmill walking in young adults

Step-by-step foot placement control, accommodating for natural variations in center-of-mass state, ensures stability during steady-state gait. Current understanding of this foot placement mechanisms is primarily based on findings during treadmill walking. However, contextual differences might hamper generalization of these findings towards overground walking, and ultimately daily life gait. This study investigated whether foot placement control manifests itself differently during overground as compared to treadmill walking in healthy young adults. 14 young adults walked at comfortable walking speed, both on the treadmill and overground in a figure-8 path. During overground walking we found a significant relationship between the step width/step length and the center-of-mass state during the swing phase of walking, capturing foot placement control with the same linear model as during treadmill walking. Contrary to what was hypothesized, we found a significant lower foot placement precision during overground walking for the step width model with center-of-mass state at the start of the swing phase as predictor, complemented by a wider average step width. Moreover, during overground walking participants responded less strongly to a deviation in center-of-mass position, yet significantly stronger to deviations in center-of-mass velocity at the end of the step for both the step width/step length models. Exploratory analysis showed a larger relative contribution of velocity feedback during overground walking as compared to treadmill walking. These differences warrant caution in generalizing foot placement findings during treadmill walking to overground walking and might be promising for the estimation of foot placement control in daily life gait.